Looks like Wisconsin is the latest state to jump on the smoking ban bandwagon. Pennsylvania has one now too, but at least there’s exceptions for bars, and other places people can expect people would be smoking, like Cigar shops.
Wisconsin’s bill is a lot worse, but it does exempt Indian reservations, so take your wampum to your local Indian Casino and smoke all you want while you gamble. I knew this issue was pretty much lost when North Carolina passed a smoking ban. North Carolina!?!? Hello!
And how is exposing unwilling persons to smoke a civil liberty?
No one forces anyone to go into an establishment where the owner has decided to allow smoking.
M Gallo:
Sorry about the deletion, but see comment policy.
I’ll preface this: I don’t know that this is what state governments shouold be making laws about. I love the _effect_ of smoking bans, but love minimally-invasive governments more.
That said, frankly, smokers have brought this crap on themselves.
I like to smoke once in a while, but I also like playing loud music and having sex. I make sure to do all three where it won’t affect other people, and I surely wouldn’t dream of doing any of ’em in a restaurant. Smokers got used to lighting up wherever they pleased, to the point that restaurants by and large couldn’t compete if they said no to smokers’ rudeness.
Again, I support the individual’s right to smoke, and have to grudgingly disapprove of anti-smoking laws. But I find it very, very hard to muster up much sympathy for people who say _they’re_ being intruded upon because somebody isn’t letting them smoke in a crowded room. That’s some pretty thick irony, there.
Any tax exempt political action committees that calls themselves “charities” that, instead of EDUCATING are now LEGISLATING, by spending huge sums of my tax money to hire lobbyists and lawyers to make laws using GESTAPO tactics using LAW ENFORCEMENT, THREATS, INTIMIDATATION, , and SNITCHING to FORCE people to OBEY their guidelines will get NO DONATIONS from me, Contributions to PACs are NOT tax deductable. All my donations are going to local events and groups that depend on local businesses and bingo halls for their support that the bans are affecting. All these “charities” are being well funded by Pfizers RJW Foundation “Smokeless States Program” and don’t need my donations.
http://www.rwjf.org/pr/product.jsp?ia=143&id=14912
Dictating behavior on private property. Bar owners have no say when these laws pass, at that point.
Government dictating what a business can or cannot do, when people are free to choose which establishments to go to.
Smoking bans, or concealed carry? Which am I referring to?
Indeed.
OK, I smoke. And I do not like these over-broad bans.
Not smoking at work, well, OK as long as I am allowed to go outside and smoke – so I get frostbitten in winter and get heat stroke in summer, which both will ensure I die even more quickly, which may be the point. Of course under some laws, certain places outdoors are also off limits, like public parks.
When I visit one of my sisters, I go outside to smoke: that is her rule, and I respect it. When she visits me, sometimes I go out – and sometimes I do not. My rule, pretty much based on weather.
But these coming from government? And Wisconsin is not the most stringent. Last year, there was a case of a person smoking in his own home whose smoke alledgedly wafted out a window, across two yards, and in through a neighbor’s window: as the law stood, that was potentially illegal and actually made it to court – where it was thrown out, this time.
In my state (RI) a similar law was passed. After more than a year in, a local news outfit made a bit of a stink when it discovered that there were places in the State House where legislators regularly met and lit up…
Or those new laws against smoking in your car if there are minors: I can sort of see that, but some are sloppily enough written that they apply to any smoking at all on the theory that you might at some time have kids with you. In such jurisdictions I could be cited even though I do not have children (my nephew recently turned fifty-five – Hi Jay!).
Retain smoking in bars? One group wanted to be able to smoke indoors, so it applied for a liquor license: the application was turned down because the head of the liquor board did not think they really wanted to drink – after all, it was an AA chapter!
“I like to smoke once in a while, but I also like playing loud music and having sex. I make sure to do all three where it won’t affect other people…”
There is no way to have sex that does not affect other people. Not even “that way.” And, if you get to thinking about it, there’s the flaw in your moral theory. You’re talking happy-talk, trying to glad-hand an ethical argument so you can collude with the statists with a clear conscience. Go ahead and collude, but that “whatever, man” reasoning will one day hang you like Absolom. You need to feel bad.
What if the governments mandated that all currently smoke-free hospitality venues MUST provide a smoking section to accommodate smokers, against the wishes of business owners who choose
to go smoke-free of their own free will?
That wouldn’t be fair, would it?
Neither are government mandated smoking bans.
Other than the occasional cigar (as in “maybe a half dozen a year” occasional), I’m not a smoker.
These bans piss me the hell off. Here in Illinois you can’t smoke indoors anywhere except a private residence. Not even within 15 feet of a door or window.
This should be regulated by the BUSINESS OWNER, not the nanny state. Several bars I frequent were no smoking BEFORE the ban, and did just fine. Now, several other bars I used to go to are out of business because they didn’t have the space or means to install a heated outdoor area for the smokers, so that business went elsewhere.
Smoking bans and the war on smoking are the most corrupt unethical pieces
of garbage ever foisted upon the private hospitality sector.
The war on ETS and tobacco are complete shams, that give governments the right
to bilk the poor and to exploit private business owners, hospitality workers and smokers.
Government power real health hazard
The bandwagon of local smoking bans now steamrolling across the nation has nothing to do with protecting people from the supposed threat of “second-hand” smoke.
Indeed, the bans are symptoms of a far more grievous threat, a cancer that has been spreading for decades and has now metastasized throughout the body politic, spreading even to the tiniest organs of local government. This cancer is the only real hazard involved – the cancer of unlimited government power.
The issue is not whether second-hand smoke is a real danger or is in fact just a phantom menace, as a study published recently in the British Medical Journal indicates. The issue is: If it were harmful, what would be the proper reaction? Should anti-tobacco activists satisfy themselves with educating people about the potential danger and allowing them to make their own decisions, or should they seize the power of government and force people to make the “right” decision?
Supporters of local tobacco bans have made their choice. Rather than trying to protect people from an unwanted intrusion on their health, the bans are the unwanted intrusion.
Loudly billed as measures that only affect “public places,” they have actually targeted private places: restaurants, bars, nightclubs, shops and offices – places whose owners are free to set anti-smoking rules or whose customers are free to go elsewhere if they don’t like the smoke. Some local bans even harass smokers in places where their effect on others is negligible, such as outdoor public parks.
The decision to smoke, or to avoid “second-hand” smoke, is a question to be answered by each individual based on his own values and his own assessment of the risks. This is the same kind of decision free people make regarding every aspect of their lives: how much to spend or invest, whom to befriend or sleep with, whether to go to college or get a job, whether to get married or divorced, and so on.
All of these decisions involve risks; some have demonstrably harmful consequences; most are controversial and invite disapproval from the neighbours. But the individual must be free to make these decisions. He must be free because his life belongs to him, not to his neighbours, and only his own judgment can guide him through it.
Yet when it comes to smoking, this freedom is under attack. Smokers are a numerical minority, practising a habit considered annoying and unpleasant to the majority. So the majority has simply commandeered the power of government and used it to dictate their behaviour.
That is why these bans are far more threatening than the prospect of inhaling a few stray whiffs of tobacco while waiting for a table at your favourite restaurant. The anti-tobacco crusaders point in exaggerated alarm at those wisps of smoke while they unleash the unlimited intrusion of government into our lives. We do not elect officials to control and manipulate our behaviour.